Those freedom fighters for medical freedom of speech, What Doctors Don’t Tell You, have released in full, for free their November issue – the cancer special.

As I’m not really up for giving WDDTY any money by subscribing and seeing all their articles in full as they’re promoters of alternative medicine, more commonly known as Woo (I’m also a tight arse), I usually only get to see the snippets they publish for free. Stuff like this.

This free copy of a publication is a good time for me to see what they’re really like. I got a link to it from they’re email newsletter and also from somewhere else I can’t remember. If you want to see it, you can download it from here.

What does it look like? Well, I’ve only got a couple of pages in and it has the look and feel of one of those womens ‘lifestyle’ or gossip magazines and starts with a long three page speech about how everyone except alt-med practitioners are in the pocket of Big Pharma and want to shut down WDDTY because they don’t accept Scientism and the alt-med practitioners are the real scientists as they have an open mind. All very predictable.

WDDTY also has a page profiling their editorial panel. I may come back to that, and the intro in another post.

For now though, I’ve only got to page 11, which sounds quite far in but isn’t once you dis-count the contents pages, editorial panel profile and the massive intro. I haven’t looked past page 11 so I don’t know what’s in store but the short articles in the Up Front section (short newsy type of articles) gives me an idea of what’s to come.

This little bit of news explains how a researcher has come to the conclusion that Big Pharma has been pushing the flu jab on everyone to boost sales. The researcher says that over the last few years the use of the flu jab has increased exponentially and is seen a ‘risk-free’ life saver whereas the vaccines aren’t particularly effective and cause more damage than good.

The thing is though, this study was conducted in the USA where there are some fundamental differences that have quite an effect.

Firstly, the researcher talks about the US market where drugs can be advertised directly to the consumer. People are encourage to go ask they’re doctors for specific drugs. In this environment more people will ask for the jab, whether they need it or not, what ever the government advice is. People, through the adverts and whether they need it or not, are encouraged to feel they need the jab. In reality though, Influenza is not a problem for a healthy person. Yes it’s unpleasant and you might think you’re dying, but if you’re healthy you will get better.

With this many more people receiving the vaccine that don’t need it, you will see a reduction in the percentage of people it will have a benefit for and there are more people to have adverse reactions to it.

The advice of the US government and the UK government is slightly different. That difference is an important one.

Even if you feel healthy, you should have the free flu
vaccination if you are:

and then reels off a similar list of vulnerable people that should be vaccinated to the list of people the US says is especially important to get the jab.

The UK says you should have the jab if you’re in a vulnerable group, the US says everyone should have the jab.

Whilst this, along with the prohibition of drugs/medicines being advertised directly to the public, means that the market for the flu jab is so much smaller in the UK that the US and the risk/benefit ratio is different. The benefits of the flu jab preventing flu turning into something really rather horrible if you’re in a vulnerable group is better than not having the flu and risking, in the very worst cases, death. If you’re categorised as vulnerable, all you’re doing is opening yourself up to the side effects with no chance of having any of the benefits the jab could bring.

The article isn’t wrong per se, but to just drop that piece in to a UK publication about American research in to what is the American flu vaccine usage without pointing out the differences between the two medical environments is misleading and wrong.

The second Up Front snippet I’m focusing on in this post is on page 11 and is not misleading, it’s just plain wrong.

‘Big farma’ law targets organic smallholdings

Commercial gardeners and farmers in Europe will soon be required to “grow, reproduce or trade” only vegetable seeds that have been approved by the EU bureaucracy. Organic, small-market gardeners and even those trying to achieve sustainable living at home will be breaking the new law if they grow unapproved plants and seeds.

It then carries on a little more, explaining how under this new law anyone, from that old chap tending his window box to the multinational company, found using, buying or selling un-registered plants and seeds with get a visit from the flower police and thrown in the gulag.

The source of this news is an online seed retailer, who’s last update on the subject on the ‘news’ page of their website is 24th December and is just an update that is asking to keep the pressure on to defeat this new law. This issue of WDDTY is November. The European Commission had already rubbished the shrill claims in September that the EU want an agency that will…

… also create a register of gardeners who will be the only ones allowed to grow and sell the approved seeds.

Garden plants will in future –if the Commission’s proposal is agreed by national Ministers and the European Parliament – only need to comply with some general rules, rather than the current more detailed quality and control requirements.

Professional organisations like nurseries that produce garden plants in large quantities will have to register. But there will be no such obligation for garden centres selling to consumers.

Of course, minimum requirements for labelling and quality will remain. Such basic requirements apply to most products and already do to flowers. Without them, consumers would not be able to have confidence in what they are buying.

In addition, if a nursery is marketing its material with a variety name, it should keep a list of its varieties, including information on the description and name of the varieties.

But such garden plant varieties will not need to be registered in the way described by the Mail and Express. There is no chance whatsoever that “that the UK would not be able to comply as it doesn’t have an official plant register” or that “this could mean unregistered plants being removed from sale, with anyone selling them facing a large fine”.

More detailed registration requirements will apply to plants – notably those used for large-scale agricultural purposes – included in the “list of EU plant species”. Even then, micro-enterprises will be exempt from those registration requirements.

And, to reiterate: ornamentals – garden plants – will not be included in that list at all.

So the bottom line is existing requirements will be significantly simplified – but some important rules will be retained so that customers can be sure that what they are buying is what it says on the packet or pot.

So all those self-medicating herbalists can rest easy. The Europeans aren’t going to be storming in and stamping all over their herb beds anytime soon.

For people that have a right old moan about not having the press ask their side of things when it all kicked off about WDDTY’s cancer edition, you’d have thought they’d have at least tried to get the EU’s side of this.

So far, there’s about as much journalistic integrity in this issue as there is active ingredients in homeopathy.